May 2, 2019

it was probably human but maybe not

How? HOW? WHY?

I need you. Please help me. Help.

I just went to the ladies' restroom on our floor. It has one of those motion-sensor light systems and the lights are very rarely off, given the constant traffic and the half-hour timer on it. It keeps the light from staying on all night.

I opened the door and walked in, and saw that it was dark. A second later, the light detected me and turned on.

Oh, good, I thought. I've got the place to myself. Rare treat.

Except that I wasn't alone. I heard a shuffling sound, clothes rustling, from one of the stalls.

What. The. Torrid. Fuck.

In such a situation, the brain starts churning, desperately searching every neuron, every cell, for a logical explanation.

We have someone among us who is capable of not being seen by a sensor.

Right.

That means they're invisible.

Well, we might have an invisible person. We'd never know, would we? Not if they were careful. They'd have to be the least productive person in the organization.

But why would they hang around here? Think of all the other things they could be doing.

No.

I tried to disprove my theory by going into a stall and sitting down, then peering underneath to check for feet.

There weren't any feet.

But there aren't any invisible people. Human nature, I reasoned, would cause them to out themselves in the world somehow. They'd need contact. They'd need interaction. We'd know, if there were invisible people.

So something was making noise in the stall, and it wasn't an invisible person. It had to be a real person who was capable of not making the light turn on and whose feet could not be seen.

It was probably a person. Maybe it was an animal. An animal using one of our toilets as a soaking tub.

No. The animal wouldn't be invisible, either. Or wear clothes.

Why didn't the clothes that I heard rustle set off the light? Invisible people don't have invisible clothes. That's only in the movies.

The only thing I was left with, sitting in my stall, tense as a high wire, was that a mentally disturbed person was in the stall, had been there for over half an hour after the person before me had departed, which was already implausible, and was squatting on top of the toilet so no one could see her legs.

I was really, really uncomfortable.

And I don't know who it was. Or what. What it was.

This bathroom thing is getting to me. It's no longer a safe place.

If you have any alternative explanation, something that can restore my sense of safety, please please tell me what it is.